Elana Sztokman: Last
week I traveled to the United States for the publication of my book, The War on Women in Israel: A Story
of Religious Radicalism and the Women Fighting for Freedom.

It was a whirlwind
week—I traveled to events and book signings across five cities in four states
in 10 days. I signed lots of books, met some fabulous people, and heard from
many people—men and women—who were deeply grateful for a moderate voice calling
for an end to the religious extremism that is hurting women.

That’s why what
happened to me on the flight home to Israel was so shocking, and so
upsetting.

Passengers
aboard an El Al flight from New York's JKF airport to Israel claim that
hundreds of ultra-Orthodox passengers demanded that they trade places with them
before takeoff, saying they cannot sit next to women.

"It
was an 11-hour long nightmare," one of the passengers summed up her
experience.

In
the wake of a petition urging El Al airlines to protect female
passengers from what it says is harassment by ultra-Orthodox male passengers, a
New York Conservative rabbi and attorney is calling on unhappy customers to put
pressure on airlines by using a U.S. federal law that prohibits discrimination
on flights to and from the United States.

Most
agreed, that as El Al seems to be the airline of choice for many orthodox
travelers, the airline is afraid to be labelled as anti-Semitic or
unaccommodating to their religious passenger’s needs. They are afraid to lose
customers and money.

Therefore they allow aggressive orthodox men to hijack
their flights, refusing to be seated and allow take-off until their demands
have been met by other passengers who paid for their flights and were assigned
seating fair and square.

Elana Sztokman,
former head of JOFA (Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance) was flying back to
Israel after a tour promoting her new book, “The War on Women in Israel: A
Story of Religious Radicalism and the Women Fighting for Freedom”, when an
Ultra Orthodox man refused to be seated next to her because she was a
woman. Mottle is joined in the studio by Voice of Israel show host Eve
Harrow to discuss this incident and the larger implications of religious
freedom in public spaces.

The Israel Religious Action Center (IRAC), representing the religious women
of Kolech, brought a class action suit against the ultra-Orthodox Kol Barama station for its discriminatory practices
against women.

... Our
victory in this case — the first class action suit dealing with gender
exclusion in Israel — signifies the final breakdown of the approach that gender
segregation and exclusion of women is acceptable because “they want it.”

This
is not a clash between Orthodox and non-Orthodox, but rather between those who
desire a Jewish and democratic Israel, embracing Jewish diversity and
respecting civil liberties and religious freedom, and those rejecting
democracy, shunning religious diversity, and attempting to use their political
clout to enforce their religious monopoly over all Jews.

It is no wonder that
more and more Orthodox rabbis, intellectuals and groups in Israel and in
America are joining in support of religious freedom. They understand that
religion by coercion is not religion, but political coercion. And they know
that with realization of religious freedom, Israel would be more democratic,
inclusive, just … and more Jewish.

Last-minute
efforts to strike a deal on creating a new egalitarian space at the
Western Wall before the Jewish New Year have failed, Haaretz has
learned.

After
a deadlock that has lasted almost one and a half years, leaders of the
Conservative and Reform movements in the United States were summoned to
Jerusalem to participate in talks last week aimed at resolving a controversial
proposal to designate a new area of the holy site for mixed prayer
services.

Israeli
government officials had hoped the leaders would reach a breakthrough in the
longstanding stalemate on the controversial proposal.

Women
of the Wall leader Anat Hoffman talks about what needs to happen for
a true compromise to materialize, and a new WOW campaign on Jerusalem buses
that will promote girls having their bat mitzvah at the Wall.

Two
Jerusalem restaurateurs asked the High Court of Justice on Monday to strike
down a law prohibiting restaurants from describing themselves in writing as
kosher establishments unless they are certified kosher by the local
rabbinate.

The
two restaurants, Carousela and Topolino, are among the leaders
of a trend in Jerusalem of restaurants that say they keep kosher but do not
have an official kashrut certificate.

When
a long list of government programs, including long-heraldedplans
to combat poverty and reduce classroom sizes, are being cut back or even put on
hold, should these twoprograms for Diaspora Jews remain
immune?

Jewish
Agency chairman Natan Sharansky forecasts a 400 percent increase
in immigration from Ukraine for the coming year, citing worsening economic
conditions and the ongoing civil war in the country’s east as contributing
factors.

Jews
in Ukraine took part in two vastly different celebrations of
Rosh Hashana this weekend.

While tens of thousands of mostly Israeli
and American pilgrims thronged to the small central Ukrainian town of Uman,
refugees fleeing the civil war raging in the country’s east held their own
smaller services as guests of the various Jewish communities with which they
have found refuge.

“Times
have changed,” he said. “Israeli officials used to come to France and elsewhere
asking Jews to donate money and make aliyah, but I’m not doing that.
There’s a historic change of approach. Israel doesn’t need your money. Our
economy is doing well. French Jews and Israel can be partners, cooperate on
various levels like education, business.”

Bennett
said the number of French Jewish youths coming to Israel on Birthright programs
would multiply by nine this year, to 700.

It
needs to be said by someone. May as well be me. I condemn the
misleading of tens of thousands of Jews into thinking that there is something
holy, religiously righteous, and blessed in Heaven in the phenomenon of 30,000
Jewish men abandoning their wives and children annually for the Days of Awe to
gather in Uman, Ukraine.

When
a woman who is in the middle of divorce proceedings comes to Yad L’isha and
says her husband wants to go to Uman, we tell her, “If he wants to go
to Uman so badly, and wants the freedom to do so, let him first grant
you freedom.” Once he grants her the get, then he can go pray
at Rebbe Nachman’s grave as much as he likes.

The Breslov Hasidic
group has asked women not to
visit Rabbi Nachman of Breslov's grave in Uman,
Ukraine, claiming that their presence may damage the sacredness of the prayers
said by male worshippers at the site.

The
chief rabbinate published on Monday an open letter written on September 16 by
Chief Rabbis David Lau and Yitzhak Yosef in which they called on relevant
authorities to prevent a Christian prayer service from being conducted at the
Southern Wall of the Temple Mount.

Their
letter was denounced by the Hiddush religious freedom lobbying group
which called on Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein to open an investigation into
the chief rabbis for possible infractions of the Law of Freedom for Worship and
Public Order.

The
High Court of Justice voted seven to two on Wednesday to uphold the
constitutionality of a law permitting certain haredi schools to opt
out of teaching core studies as long as they simultaneously took a hit in
public funding.

Prof. Aviad Hacohen,
dean of Sha’arei Mishpat Academic Center, who represented the
ultra-Orthodox defendants in the case, praised the decision taken by the court
in a statement made to the media.

“We
are pleased that the court accepted our position and that the core curriculum,
which we see as a blessing in itself, should be studied by choice and desire
and not by force of law,” he said.

“In the ultra-Orthodox society in recent
years there has been a welcome change and many of its sons and daughters turn,
after studying many years in yeshivot and seminaries, to
academic studies. The attempt to force upon them a core curriculum could
stop this welcome trend and bring about the opposite effect.”

Data
from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA)
2000 study were analyzed to compare
educational achievement of Jewish students from public religious and public
secular secondary schools in Israel. Public religious school students achieved
higher scores in a standardized test of reading than students at public secular
schools.

For
the first time, the party’s constitution allows the election of Jewish Home
leaders who are not explicitly devoted to the Orthodox religious observance
that is part of the party’s defining ideology.

Taken
together, these new stipulations reorient the traditionally religious party
dramatically, from a home for a narrow ideological subset of Israeli society to
one that openly courts larger audiences in the Israeli mainstream.

In
the context of an increasingly religious society dominated by religious
institutions, Israeli seculars must claim that the empty cart belongs to those
who use tradition in a mechanical way, those who are afraid of their own
ability to probe their creativity, those who use the fear of others as a way to
shape their identity.

Secularity’s cart is as full as that of the religious,
precisely because, over the static order of tradition, it prefers the energetic
and chaotic movements of reason and human creativity.

[T]he
selection of Rabbi Shalom Cohen as the heir to the spiritual leadership of the
Shas movement has probably done lasting damage to the political party’s chances
of retaining voters from outside the haredi core.

Officially,
the gathering was organized not by Shas, but by El Hama’ayan, the
association that runs the party’s network of schools. That made it possible to
invite government officials such as the Sephardi chief rabbi to the memorial.
Nevertheless, the ceremony was clearly a Shas event.

On
July 9, 2014, as Israel prepared for a ground incursion in Gaza,
Col. Ofer Winter, commander of the Givati Brigade, sent a
letter to his subordinate officers, which was criticized for its religious
content. Prof. Mordechai Kremnitzer discusses the
appropriateness of the content of the letter.

Several
Israeli Arab communities are enraged over a plan by a Christian-Jewish charity
to distribute food vouchers to needy families at Christmastime via a
controversial organization that encourages Christians to join the Israeli
army.

May
our daily prayer for “matir asurim” – the “freeing of the
chained” – be augmented as we enter into this Sabbatical (shmitta) year,
marked by the dictum: “you shall proclaim liberty throughout the land.”

On
August 17, 2014, hundreds of people protested outside the wedding of
Morel Malka, a Jewish woman who converted to Islam, and Mahmoud Mansour,
an Israeli Arab, following calls by the Lehava NGO to oppose the
marriage. The next morning, Rabbi Dr. Benjamin Lau shared the following
thoughts on the tension between Judaism and democracy in this case.

A
Jerusalem Municipality decision recently
angered Hareidi representatives of the city, according to a report
by Tzipi Malcob. The
municipality decided to name a street “HaBetula meLudmir”, or in English,
“The Virgin from Ludmir”.